The Ends of the Earth

Cloth $30.00ISBN: 9781909961029
Published
May 2015
Not for sale in the United Kingdom or Europe

E-book $30.00ISBN: 9781909961036
Published
December 2014

An author, foreign correspondent, academic, and television personality, Roger Willemsen is a familiar figure in Germany, and The Ends of the Earth offers English-language readers a chance to engage with his uniquely astute take on the world. Consisting of twenty-two essays recounting and reflecting on a lifetime of travel to the far and forgotten corners of our planet, the book offers remarkable encounters and mysterious entanglements in locations as diverse as a Kamchatkan volcano, a Burmese railway station, an Arctic icebreaker, and a Minsk hospital ward. Willemsen is the perfect companion, reveling in the strange and unlovely, and tracing unexpected connections among places, times, and peoples.

Eifel – Departure Gibraltar – The Ne Plus Ultra The Himalayas – In the fog of the Prithvi Highway Isafjördur – The blind spot God’s Window – The final curtain Minsk – The stranger in the bed Patagonia – The forbidden place Timbuktu – The Boy Indigo Bombay – The oracle Tangkiling – The road to nowhere Kamchatka – Ashes and magma Mandalay – A dream of the sea Lake Fucino – Wasting away Gorée – The door of no return Hong Kong – Poste restante The Amu-Darya – On the frontiers of Transoxania Toraja – Among the dead Tonga – Taboo and fate Kinshasa – Scenes from a war Chiang Mai – Opium Orvieto – The fixation The North Pole - Contemplation

Review Quotes

World Literature Today

“This engrossing collection of travel essays . . . carries the reader to exotic locales while exploring the psychogeographical links that draw them all together. In exploring places considered foreboding by others, Willemsen reminds us of the indomitable human urge to inhabit and understand our environment, however extreme.”

Metro

“Those who prefer an adventurous armchair read to the real thing should look no further than Roger Willemsen’s daring new book. . . . A rewarding read that questions the art of travel and our human existence.”

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, on the German edition

“Brilliant. . . . We go from Gibraltar to Iceland, from Minsk to Patagonia, to Timbuktu and Bombay, the Kamchatka Peninsula and Mandalay. . . . Every episode is a drama with the traveler as tragic hero.”

For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu